Massively Macabre

Little Red Riding Hood has good reason to be afraid in Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm. The Grimms – Will (Matt Damon) and Jake (Heath Ledger), whom Gilliam presents as itinerant hucksters doing a brisk trade in fake exorcisms – don't much care whether a certain little girl makes it to Grandmother's house intact. But when ordered by the authorities to find out why kids have been disappearing, the brothers come face-to-face with a 500-year-old witch whose beauty regimen requires the sacrifice of virgins. Not for Gilliam the saccharine fairy tales beloved by children: In his version, Will and Jake learn firsthand the horrors of enchantment.

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With dazzling visual effects by Kent Houston, Gilliam's collaborator since Life of Brian, The Brothers Grimm combines the malevolent whimsy of early Disney with the dark hyperrealism of 21st-century fantasy-adventure. Central to the story is Queen Mirror (Monica Bellucci), a composite of Grimm villains – like the queen in "Snow White" and the sorceress in "Rapunzel." To film the climactic scene in which the brothers climb her tower, Gilliam shot the action on a full-scale set against bluescreen, then digitally conjoined that footage with 3-D matte paintings and additional film of the tower in miniature. It might have been simple had he not also insisted on keeping the camera in constant, swirling motion, but the sudden shifts in perspective are spellbinding. "I want the ground to be below us," he said at a screening of his work in progress, slated to open August 26, "because when it disappears, it's a longer fall."

Ever since his Monty Python days, Gilliam has used film to subvert reality; fairy tales are simply his latest vehicle. For a time, cost overruns and f/x problems dragged out the production. This spring, however, he turned up at Cannes with the picture nearly complete. "These stories informed who I am," he said. "So it's about time I got my revenge."

– Frank Rose

DimensionDirector Terry Gilliam shot The Brothers Grimm in Prague two years ago, but didn�t finish tweaking the digital effects until June. DimensionThe film�s forest set (sketch shown here) was designed to seem sentient and antagonistic. Guy Hendrix DyasGilliam says his movie is suitable for anyone 10 or older. �Children are tough little things. They can take a lot more than people think.� Francois DuhamelConcept art of the 500-year-old Queen Mirror � played in the movie by Monica Bellucci � in her Throne Room. Guy Hendrix DyasProduction designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, in charge of the film�s look, works on the tower. D. ArcadioGilliam planned to use an animatronic wolf. When that didn�t work, he switched to a computer-generated model, with human eyes inserted digitally. Dimension

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